


The Revolution

by chimneysmoke (recension)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Dystopia, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recension/pseuds/chimneysmoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt was: <i>The Hunger Games,</i> Finnick/Johanna. You like your girls insane. (Sociopaths!AU?)</p><p>Hacker/Vigilante!Johanna. Rentboy!Finnick. Nonexistent!Annie. Picture Panem as a Dystopian city, Districts as Zones. Picture Johanna as a fun-house-mirror Lisbeth Salander (this was unintentional but the gritty feel is kind of what I was going for).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Revolution

**Author's Note:**

> This is AU. I took sociopath to be textbook definition. This ran away from me length-wise so it hasn't really been edited as it was just a comment ficathon drabble originally... hope that's ok :|

Johanna tears a strip of beef jerky with her teeth, snapping the leather back as her head rebounds. She tosses the meat onto the package and chews open-mouthed as she types. It's grotesque.

He likes it. 

Despite her physical appearance—short stature, large child-like eyes, soft dark curls sheared roughly at her chin—she's not delicate.

The six screens stacked in front of her in two neat rows flicker and twitch with electronic displays, morphing and displaying as she tacks away at the keyboard in front of her. She swallows her bite and sits for a moment, slack-jawed, reading and processing the information in front of her.

"So, Golden Boy," she addresses him, not tearing her eyes from the screens. "What brings you to my lair?"

It's a deceptively complex question, he knows. She wants to feel out his allegiance, feel out his intelligence. She wants to size him up. It's smart to do. But he also knows she's predisposed to trust him. It took two weeks to get a meeting with her, asking around to friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. She had to have done background checks on him, a fair few, before he ever walked through her doorway. He could already have her locked up for just the possession of the equipment he's seen.

"I want to help," he murmurs.

Johanna pulls her leg down from the desk, drawing her attention back to him as her chair swivels. She pushes off from the ground, pushing the chair across the tiny room to a black half-fridge which reveals a stock full of canned lemon-lime-flavored caffeine-injected malt liquor. She grabs one and pops it open, slamming the door shut again before scooting back to her place at the computer station. 

"That's a child's answer," she murmurs, taking a generous swig before clunking down the chilled can next to the jerky.

 _She's not wrong,_ Finnick thinks. Panem has been in rapid decline for years. The Capitol knows and sees all. Or at least it pretends to. Anyone over the age of twelve is sorted and put into a profession. Some escape tracking, go rogue. They live underground. They live without bar code tattoos. Johanna has never had a state-regulated physical, or had to wait in a bread line. Johanna wasn't sorted into a brothel. He has never met a Free person before.

"My profession gives me access to information," Finnick offers. "I don't want that information to go to waste, should something happen to me."

"You don't look like a rebel," she cracks dryly, taking another large sip from her canned drink.

"You don't look like one either," he frowns, sensing the charm on her aggression wear thin. Defensively, he stands, planning on getting out of the apartment before things get too deep. "Look we can part ways if you want, I'll find another hacker. You can continue doing whatever the hell it is you do."

"I siphon money from the Capitol," she supplies, though he hasn't asked. She says it so casually that he really starts to think this girl is bat-shit insane. "And now that I've told you I can't let you out that door without something equally incriminating, Rent-boy."

The slur sets Finnick's teeth on edge, mostly because she's acting like he's had a choice in all of this. The only choice he's made in his whole life is finding her. Johanna presses a button underneath the desk, near her keyboard. He instantly hears industrial locks sealing the door behind him. He'd been wondering what her security system was like. 

He settles back into his seat, knowing leaving isn't an option now, and despite her prickly demeanor she did let him in. The only thing he's really sure of is that she hates the Capitol, but in Panem that's enough.

 

She's quiet and he likes that about her.

She keeps secrets as well as he does but doesn't put on a face about it.

But sometimes when she watches rebellion broadcasts, the footage of guerrilla executions, she laughs.

It unsettles him.

 

It becomes routine. Finnick uses his one night off a week to make his way through the Capitol city, crawling through a manhole grate to the sewers to cross zone borders. If he's quick he can end up in Zone 4 before state curfew. Then it's just a 3 block sprint and a 6 floor climb to Johanna's. Every night he can, he comes and keeps her company. He tells her his secrets. She confirms what she can and passes the information on to the rebel media service in encrypted files. Information is everything.

The more he comes over, the more he starts to like her. She's crazy smart, and dry witted. She doesn't seem bowled over by his charm or his looks which is, frankly, a relief. Finnick hasn't had a friend in too long. But sometimes he wonders what makes her do it all. There are no family photographs in her whole apartment, and Johanna has never spoken of anyone in her life. He wonders if her life is lonely. Wandering around the tiny space for the fiftieth time while she types, he notices a single human tooth in a glass case on her shelf wedged between a set of computer programming manuals and old novels that all seem to be from the banned lists.

"Ask," she says, without turning around, continuing to type. "I can feel the question radiating from your golden fucking head."

Finnick frowns, feeling like he's offended her, but quickly he decides not to bother caring about it. "A tooth?"

"My father's," she says, clacking away. "It's all the Capitol left of him," she guzzles the remainder of her can and tosses it towards her rubbish bin, sliding from the computer to grab another.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, feeling for her. "I'm so sorry, Johanna."

"It's okay. I hated him. I hated my whole family, truth be told. Geniuses always do," she dryly explains. "Doesn't mean the Capitol had any right to take them," she punctuates the sentence with the pop of her can, wheeling back to her workstation. She starts typing. Finnick doesn't ask anymore questions.

 

One night she invites him on something she calls a hunt.

He doesn't go.

She comes back limping with her hands covered in blood.

He says nothing.

 

It's months before they sleep together. Johanna tastes like citrus and tangy white liquor as she presses her mouth against his. It doesn't feel romantic, which genuinely excites Finnick. He's so burnt out on romance that even if there were any it would feel trite. There are no rose petals and candles with her, just the glow of her flickering screens and her mattress. Just her body and his.

She treats the act like it's purely physical. A deed to be done. She fucks him like she eats, unpretentious and indelicate. He tries to savor the moment, to draw her into kisses and feel her soft, dusty skin. Johanna resists his mouth and bucks her hips instead. It's all the guidance he needs.

If there's one thing Finnick Odair knows it's how to give a woman what she wants.

Afterwords she quickly showers. When she emerges from the bathroom with damp skin and hair she ignores him, even though he's still naked in her bed. She settles in at her screens and resumes her typing like five minutes ago he wasn't inside of her. Like five minutes ago he wasn't shouting her name.

He feels oddly used and vulnerable, so he rises to dress, to put on his Capitol armor.

He walks across the apartment carrying his clothes in a loose bunch at his hip. He poses in full view by the bathroom door. He's fully flaccid, but lunges slightly, flexing his thighs. He's seduced with less. "Am I distracting you?" He asks with a smirk, finally drawing her gaze.

Johanna's gaze falls on his face first, then his abs, then his crotch, then back to his face. "No," she murmurs, bringing her big eyes back to the screen, typing again.

 

Against his best judgment, Finnick starts to fall for her.

He wants to protect her.

He wants to be protected by her.

He's never felt safer in anyone's presence.

 

"You're not prepared for the fall out of what we're doing," Johanna says one night. It's a statement, not a question. Finnick doesn't really argue. He sticks his pinkie finger in the pages of the book she's letting him read and looks up from his position, laying across her bed. She's writing some sort of virus to cripple the Capitol payroll for Peacekeepers. 'They are the weak link in the armor,' she had said. No money means no police. The politicians don't stand a chance against the hungry public.

It's an idea she's always wanted to try but needed more information about the Peacekeepers' organization. The Chairman of the Board of Overseers is a client of Finnick's. Thursday evenings. Rough. It's not difficult to copy down a routing address from his ledger while he sleeps.

"Does it matter?" He asks.

"Not really. But it's my impression that you actually care about me a little and I should return the favor," Johanna uncomfortably shifts in her seat. "You've called us friends before. I think this is something a friend would do."

 _Friends,_ he thinks. _We do things friends shouldn't do to one another._ Finnick smiles a little though. She doesn't often try to do anything for anyone. Trying to care for him feels nice.

"If we get caught, we'll be dead. Aiding the rebellion is treason. I have my own sins as well... the books, the money... my _hobby_ ," she frowns, finally bringing her eyes to him. "Are you willing to die for this? They stripped me of my fear. I'm not so sure they've done you the same favor."

He thinks about her words for a long minute. He thinks about the way she constantly incites the Capitol, as if she's asking for a fight.

"More importantly do you know this is going to send people to their deaths?"

Finnick imagines the Presidential mansion's marble halls covered in blood. He imagines Snow's head on a pike. It turns his stomach slightly, but he just shrugs. "Panem is broken. I think the only chance anyone has at fixing it is to set it ablaze."

She manages a small smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes. She's merely indulging him with the show of emotion. "I've always found the slow route frustrating," she murmurs, standing from her seat. She crosses the few steps to the bed, straddling his lap as she takes the book from him, and tosses it aside. It slides along her wood floor and comes to a stop somewhere near the wall. He can't see it in the dim of the room.

"I lack patience," she explains, and her lips descend on his.

 

Her hunts become more frequent.

She doesn't ask for his company anymore. 

She fucks him, and he wakes up alone.

When she returns, he washes blood from her clothes.

 

The night their virus goes live Johanna locks them up in her apartment—bolts keeping her door secure, the windows shut with steel. For the first time he's ever seen, she's shut the computer off. The room is noticeably colder and quieter without the whir and hum of the drives. For the first time, she sleeps beside him as he stays the night. Finnick doesn't sleep.

Outside the riots are loud, blazes and gunshots crackling away. Their virus, their fever caught like brush fire. 

Finnick thinks about the war that's starting, about the death he's caused by the secrets he's earned. About the uncertain life that lies before any of them. Johanna turns away from his body in the dark, stretching the sheet between them. He rolls in mimicry to press up against her, letting his arm hold her back close to his chest.

The revolution is indoors too.


End file.
